Mercy killing

The Canadian media are all agog these days in promoting mercy killing. Ethicist Margaret Somerville urges restraint and some safeguards against abuse by the victim's family and doctors. My letter to the Globe and Mail. Unpublished.

Margaret Somerville deals with deep truths while outlining ethical problems in the matter of doctor-assisted dying (Why judges should have the final word, May 4). We can discuss ethics, legalities, rights, demands, conditions, immunities, and safe guards as much as we wish with regard to mercy killing as we once termed it. It will in no way affect the ultimate application of the proposed legislation. 

Human rights tribunals have the authority to override Bill C-14. They have the final word, not our legislators, not our judges. Someone refused a hastened death by the courts need only petition with a sufficiently heart-rending plea to one of these tribunals to qualify for death on demand. The history of these unregulated agencies in dealing with the vulnerable, as they themselves define the word, points in only one direction.

It's curious that the final arbiter of this issue is not even mentioned in the debate.

Atheists and their Wannabes

Letter to The Globe and Mail. Unpublished.

Margaret Somerville, McGill University Founding Director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics, and Law, speaks of the passion, actual or staged, of people like Richard Dawkins (The search for shared ethics, Jan 27, 2009). Atheists define themselves by what they do not believe.

But, Dawkins and his wannabes are anti-theists. They define themselves by what they ardently oppose. And what they oppose is the inclusion in the public forum of the beliefs of the majority, people, those people who acknowledge some form of Higher Power in the grand scope of things. As Professor Somerville points out this attempted exclusion is undemocratic.

The legal concept of separation of church and state originated in a distorted interpretation of the First Amendment of the the U.S. Constitution.  The Amendment was designed to protect churches from state interference, from the government creating a state religion. Somewhere along the line, it got contorted into its present configuration.

The fact that this concept is not in accord with Islamic thought poses a problem for the Western world.